Skip to main content

Whipping boy vs Whipping Tom

admin Confusing Phrases

whipping boy—

1. (UK hist.) a boy educated with a prince and punished in his stead:

  • Sir Mungo had been attached to Court in the capacity of whipping-boy to King James the Sixth.

2. a scapegoat:

  • The choice of agents is a difficult matter for you have to choose persons for whose faults you are to be punished; to whom you are to be the whipping-boy.

whipping Tom—(UK hist.) a person who whips others:

  • Ritual beating in commemoration of ritual murder is known in many places. Until 1845 the Whipping Toms plied their whips freely in the streets of Leicester in commemoration of the massacre of the Danes.